ns. While in the
state legislature, he studied law and later went to Springfield to
practise it. The only other public office he makes note of is his
election to the lower house of Congress for one term (1846). He
returned to Springfield and took up more earnestly the study and
practice of law; he entered with spirit into the political campaigns,
and constantly was growing in public esteem. His public debates with
Douglas (1858) made him a familiar figure throughout the state of
Illinois, and his profound knowledge and masterful handling of
questions debated, his convincing and unanswerable arguments, his
clear grasp of the political situation, began to gain the attention of
Eastern politicians, convincing them and the country at large that
they had a mighty force to reckon with in the prairie state of
Illinois.

Although he lost the election to the United States Senate, and Douglas
won, the campaign had pushed him to the front as a national figure,
and paved the way for his presidential nomination.

In 1860, at the Republican convention assembled in Chicago, Abraham
Lincoln was nominated for President. In November he was elected and
March 4, 1861, he was inaugurated. His address at this time was an
earnest plea for peace and friendship {337} between the North and the
South: "We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break our bond of affection."

But the war tide was rising and could not be stemmed; four years of
bitter conflict ensued. Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves was made
only after he had convinced himself it could not be longer deferred
and preserve the Union. "My paramount duty," he said, "is to save the
Union, and not either to destroy or save slavery. What I do about
slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save
the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it
would save the Union." His Emancipation Proclamation, officially
freeing the slaves, was finally issued in September, 1862, to take
effect Jan, 1st of the following year.

Lincoln was elected to the Presidency for the second term and
inaugurated March 4, 1865, while the war was still on. His second
inaugural address closes with these words with which every boy should
be familiar, voicing as they do the exalted spirit of a great and good
man:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right, as God gives us t